Imagine home. Whatever that is for you, imagine your home. Maybe it is the house you grew up in. Or it could be your aunt and uncle’s house or your grandparents’ house. Maybe your home is not related to family at all, and it’s a friend’s house, or maybe wherever you’re living at the moment. Imagine that place. You walk in the front door; what do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell? How is it decorated, and what is the layout of the rooms? What are the elements that make that place home?
We as humans have an incredible way of making ourselves comfortable. We take the environments we are placed in and make them homey and comforting for ourselves and others. That’s such a beautiful thing about our nature; we take ordinary places and cultivate them into spaces of comfort, joy and love.
When you imagined your home, I’m sure it wasn’t just an empty house or apartment. There were probably elements to it that made it home. Maybe it was decorated a certain way, or you made countless memories throughout the various rooms of the home. No matter what home is to you, I’m sure it’s special for a variety of reasons, and we owe a lot of that to our nature to create and cultivate home.
Now, I want to pose a question to you: If we are so good at creating and maintaining physical homes, how does that translate to our spiritual homes? In other words, how are you making your heart as much of a home as the place you call home? Be thinking about that as we dive into our Scripture today.
For this reason I kneel before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us — to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Today, I want you to reimagine your idea of home. Although we have these precious physical places we visit and do life in, I want to extend to you an invitation of a different kind of home. A home that resides in you. If we read that verse again, verse 17, it says that Christ dwells in our hearts through faith. The Spirit of our living Savior constantly is within us. In verse 20, the Spirit is referred to as the “… that power that works in us”.
Romans 8:11 tells us that the same power that raised Jesus from the grave lives in us.
So, as much as we have physical homes outside of ourselves, we also house the Holy Spirit inside of us, and that’s a home we don’t often think of maintaining. Our physical homes aren’t just naturally homes. We maintain them, we decorate them and make them our own, we spend time in them and make memories with others.
As I mentioned earlier, as human beings, we are fantastic at taking ordinary places, and cultivating them into spaces of comfort, joy, and love.
So, the question remains: How are you making your heart just as much of a home as the place you call home?
Maybe a better question would be, how do we make our heart a home?
The beautiful thing about this passage is Paul, the author, doesn’t leave us wondering about this. Just after he states in verse 17 that Christ dwells in our hearts, he says this:
I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
How does Paul suggest we cultivate our hearts into a home? By being rooted and firmly established in love, to know the length and width, height and depth of Christ’s love, and to be filled with all the fullness of God.
Proverbs 4:23 advises us to guard our hearts, for everything we do flows from it.
Our hearts are sacred places. We must guard them, and fill them with love and the fullness of God.
More on how to make your heart into a home tomorrow…
Author Spotlight:
Hello, friends! My name is Haleigh! I am studying Pastoral Ministry at Bethel University. One of the most prominent passions in my life is women’s ministry. I have such a heart for women and helping them see how God created us with such for such an intentional purpose. Read more of my writing here.
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